Chương 138: 51 - TIMES BEST FORGOTTEN

Late in the evening, T'balt sat alone in his room inside the library. He was covered down below by a pair of old sweatpants given to him by one of the Gracelandians, and the rest of him was drying off fresh out of a washroom. Apparently, one of the Gracelandians was a plumber who was figuring out a way to use loot to build a plumbing system throughout the island. That would give everyone showers and running water.

Until then, though, T'balt had to bathe himself with a bucket, a washrag, and some cheap scavenged bar of soap. It was still more refreshing than two weeks in a dungeon, so it didn't bother him. He sat at the bottom of his bed, bent over his notebook that he'd been writing in. He was taking note of all the different things he was learning in Graceland. The people Uriel was constantly bringing here, he was discovering, weren't just randomly selected people.

They were experts, trade workers, and dedicated thinking types. People that, when put together, could build out an entire city no problem. The issue before just seemed to be that they didn't have the direction and organization to keep the place running on their own. With him and the others being in charge, that wasn't a problem. Now T'balt was learning all sorts of things about properly building emergency housing and thriving with the resources they had.

It was knowledge he could've used to help build out the church more efficiently in future iterations, so he wrote it down and studied it. That way he'd remember for next life. There was a knock at the door. He wasn't expecting anyone. It was well past midnight, but he welcomed them in anyway. It was Ellie. She was wearing a long, thin nightgown that exposed her fair, freckled shoulders. She closed the door behind her.

"These people here are exhausting. You'd think this was one giant cult." T'balt laughed, remembering when people used to say the same thing about her and the church.

"Yeah…" She sat next to him, rubbing his shoulders and peeking into his notebook. He set it down. There were still things in there he didn't want this version of Ellie to see. This one didn't know about Monan, or Nrv, or the dozens of ways that he'd seen her die. Those were problems long past. Solved problems best kept to himself. He knew from other lives that it bothered her when he was secretive about these things, but he played it off as if he put it down to give her his sole attention.

"How have things been going out there?" he asked.

"Actually pretty great. The doctors here are pretty funny. One of them was complaining that he went through 12 years of training just to be outdone by a coin. Another was saying that everyone was worried about AI putting them out of a job when they should've been worrying about magic." T'balt laughed.

"At least they have a sense of humor about it."

"On the downside, people here don't seem to be interested in building any places of worship unless it's for the Bestower." Her face dragged a bit, and she went quiet for a moment.

"You were a fan of his, weren't you?" he asked.

"I read a few things by him, but… it wasn't that big of a deal." He remembered how she would follow every single word he spoke like a teacher's pet. She'd likely downplayed it so she could dissociate somewhat. It was understandable. Finding out one of your idols was a criminal, he imagined, made people question things about themselves.

"Do you really think he's the kind of guy that could do something like that?" he asked.

"I don't know. I never met him." She said things like that sometimes, trying to catch him speaking to her version of her that wasn't this one.

"I know… never mind." He stood up, fetching a towel to finish drying his hair. Ellie sat there, watching him, the skin on her fingertips becoming clammy. She felt almost desperate to come up with something to say.

"In the ideal society, justice is given as high a priority as food and water," she quoted.

"He wrote stuff like that all the time. He put a high value on justice. It's ironic, isn't it? … considering he likely wrote that stuff in a prison cell." T'balt considered.

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"How many of them out there know what he did?"

"Just the few that stayed in the library like David." He found a black t-shirt to put on. But he didn't look her in the eye, knowing what she was really asking.

"There was no sense in telling everyone else. You've seen how much they worship him. It'd likely drive a wedge through everyone in the city. Then we'd have way more problems than we do now."

"Do you think that's fair? Wouldn't they have a right to know?"

"If them not knowing is keeping everything peaceful, then it is what it is."

"So it's a requirement for Redeemers to hide things about themselves." He suddenly turned to her.

"It's fine. I mean, you hid the thing about your ex cheating on you and stranding you for I don't know how many lives. Some things we just keep secret, yeah?" Her expression was utterly perplexed. His tone was scornful, but to her this was an issue that she never knew was an issue. To her, it was the first time it was brought up. How was she supposed to know about the decisions she made in other lives? As far as she was concerned, he already knew everything there was to know about her.

"I can't defend myself for what I thought about you in other lives." T'balt sighed.

"I know. I'm sorry. Just forget it…. I'm gonna go find Tyene."

"This late?"

"Yeah. There's no way I'm getting any sleep tonight. There's just too much to think about. She said she was gonna be drinking at one of the bars they have here. I just need to go bounce some ideas off of her." He put on his shoes and picked up his notebook. She stared at the notebook, knowing the real reason why he was leaving.

"It's because she can remember," she thought. He leaned over to give her a small kiss on the forehead. But before he could turn to go, she grabbed his wrist.

"Hey," she stopped him, caressing his arm and sliding her soft fingers up to his neck.

"Not everything is life or death. It can wait. Don't forget about us little people." Before he could respond, she kissed him and slowly pulled him back to the bed, undoing the straps of her nightgown.

"You're more forward than usual," he smiled, unable to take his eyes off her thin, supple body. She pushed him down and mounted him.

"Isn't that okay?"

"Yeah. I guess things have been pretty riled up this life… I mean with Tyene and Uriel and—""Shhh..." She put a finger to his lips.

"Don't talk about any of that stuff. Just focus on me." Realizing he was putting his foot in his mouth, he obliged and let her kiss down his body. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. And contrary to how he thought the night was going to go, he slept like a baby. Vienna stood stiffly outside of a hastily built saloon, trying to drown out the ruckus of all the yelling and nonsense happening inside.

She watched her special tablet, which showed a camera feed from inside.

"You know you don't have to just stand outside," one of the Gracelandians said, taking a smoke break. She didn't look at him.

"I don't like the noise."

"Then why are you even here?" Inside was madness incorporated. All of the Gracelandians were taking out all the stress of having survived doomsday with alcohol and prejudice. Dozens of people inside were drunk and partying like it was a nightclub on a Saturday night. And leading the festivities was one, Tyene Demue, sitting on the bar, screaming her head off, and holding a half-empty bottle of tequila.

"So wait, you guys can really see the future?" a college-aged boy asked her.

"Oh, I can see so much more than that… For example," she took a swig straight out of the bottle.

"I know Evan over there is a limped dick mother fucker." The group started to laugh and pointed at Evan, whose face had gone red.

"Dude, Evan, aren't you married?" Someone asked.

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Tyene winked at the man, who tried to hide in the corner. Suddenly scorned, she decided to pull over one of the younger men and plant a kiss right on his beer-stained lips. Then she whispered in his ear, "You're not even gonna remember this." She kissed him again before suddenly shoving him away. One of the women there approached her, overly eager to take her turn with the magic fortune teller.

"My turn, tell me something about myself."

"You had a tattoo artist boyfriend who tried to give you a tramp stamp when you were passed out drunk… he did a bad job." More laughs came in as the woman tried to deny it. Another one came for their turn, but all they got was, "No fuck off. I don't remember you." She ran out of liquor shortly after, unable to fathom her disappointment.

"Bartender, I'm out," she slurred. The bartender looked up at her as she stretched her body across the bar counter.

"I'm sorry, but the Bestower's manifest says to limit alcohol consumption. So we have to limit our supply."

"What? Screw his manifest! Don't you know I'm one of the people in charge here!"

"That doesn't change the fact that if you keep taking whole bottles of liquor, we won't have enough for the rest of the week."

"Fine. I'll take care of it." Without saying anything else, she shoved her way out of the bar. Vienna followed her as she stumbled all the way back to the library. When the dark-haired woman asked what she was doing, Tyene suddenly disappeared, accompanied by a thunderous roar leading to Vienna audibly groaning. Tyene appeared at a gas station not far from her home, right in the freezer section where they kept the alcohol.

After fumbling and falling over everything, she tried to gather as much as she could before realizing she didn't have the arms or the strength to carry ten 24-packs of beer. That's when an idea popped into her head. She teleported near enough to the library so no one would wake up to the sound of the Wanderer. Then she stumbled her way down the stairs, searching around in the dark. Eventually she found T'balt's room and creaked the door slightly open, seeing him and Ellie passed naked in the bed.

"Pfft..." She stopped herself from laughing.

"How cute." Under their snores, she crawled inside to T'balt's bag and started rummaging around until she found a strength loot.

"This should work." A bit later, she reappeared at the bar with a Jenga stack of beer cases, an energy shot, a bag of snack cakes, and a pair of sunglasses to hide the drunken dark circles around her eyes. The crowd cheered as she announced that by the decree of the Redeemers, the party would continue all night long. That was until Monan showed up, attracted to the smell of alcohol like a bloodhound.

As soon as he walked in the door, still refusing to wear a shirt, everyone stopped in their tracks, remembering the man responsible for hanging the Bestower above their city. But to everyone's surprise, except Tyene's, he just snatched the can out of her hand and drank a whole beer in one go. They took it as an indication that the night was far from over. Tyene suddenly felt sick to her stomach, and while Monan was chatting it up with some of the female regulars, she slipped away.

"I'm not staying here with that guy." She decided to walk to one of the island beaches, staring up at the moon on the way. Then she realized 'that guy' was following her.

"What do you want, number 1?" she said mockingly, never caring for her own label of number 4.

"I thought you were all about having a good time. Go back to the bar and leave me alone." He caught up to her quickly. It didn't take much effort, given her stumbling steps.

"As much as I wouldn't mind getting shitfaced, I came out here for you."

"How ironic. I came out here to…" she had to hold in a burp.

"get away from you." Monan took a few steps closer to her, ogling her up and down.

"We need to go over your little trust issues before they become a problem."

"A problem? Well, you should've thought of that before being born an asshole." She tripped over, nearly falling into him but catching herself. She hated not being composed around him, but that was exactly why he came looking for her at this time of night.

"Listen. I'm just trying to make a home for our family here. That's all I care about right now. So why don't you just play along, bird?"

"Pfft. Don't act like you give a damn about family."

"I do. The Redeemers are my family. My only family. Not their friends… and not their kids." When he said that, something in her body just reacted. Maybe it was the loot inside her, maybe it was years of pent-up anger. She teleported behind him, throwing a punch directly at the back of his head. He walked out of the way as the strength loot carried her momentum straight through an empty building. She crashed to the floor as the rubble fell around her.

But because of the strength loot, she was able to just push everything off her. Monan looked amused, standing outside with his arms crossed.

"I thought I told you no loot," she seethed.

"I don't need a reflex to dodge your drunk-ass. You're nowhere near as unpredictable as you think you are." She got up to throw another punch. This time he just sat down as she stumbled into a faceplant.

"You okay? Maybe I should get your bodyguard to throw the punch for you," he laughed.

"She does everything else for you."

"Shut up." She gave up, deciding instead to just sit on the ground until Monan offered her a hand up. She didn't accept it and used the broken rubble to pull herself up and walk away.

"The kid wouldn't have come back, you know," he said. The words stopped her still.

"You waited a conveniently long time to decide that."

"But you know I'm right. Because you tried. It didn't work, did it?" She stayed quiet.

"It would've been worse the longer you kept them."

"Don't pose it like you did anything to try to spare me. We both know the only reason you do anything is to find the most sadistic ways to hurt people." He shrugged, cocking his neck to the side.

"You're right." It was an admittance, but it wasn't accompanied by an evil smile or any sort of sarcasm. He looked surprisingly serious.

"You know why I choose to fuck with you guys?" He stepped close enough to her to whisper.

"I've been fucking so long that the normal shit doesn't get me off anymore. But hate-fucking… all that pent-up anger, fear, and hatred fills you up like a balloon, and when it bursts… it's like a fucking cocaine high. I can do it with props all day but with Redeemers… I can't take back what I do. And that upsets me. There's nothing else in this world that upsets me but my own family hating me. I spent ten thousand years chasing that high, and now I have a limitless supply. That's why I genuinely love you all.

You make me feel something." He was standing intoxicatingly close to her, letting his breath warm her neck. She suddenly felt afraid. Not of him. Of what he was. Of what he could make her. Monan slowly circled her in the middle of the street.

"You'll be the same one day. Maybe after a thousand years, you'll realize that someone like me is the only way to feel anything. But you already know what I'm talking about… I know you went to see your husband from a past life today. I bet it pissed you off to look at him. Because you didn't feel the things you should be feeling. You felt boredom. Apathy. You took one good look at him and realized…" His hands were caressing her arms, lightly dragging their way to the skin under her shirt.

"You prefer the hate-fucking."

"Stop," she said lightly.

"You've got the Wanderer. You can teleport away whenever you want." But she didn't. She continued to let his hands rub all over her body until they made their way to her lips. Then he inched his face to her own. She woke up that morning, groggy under the white sheets of a bed. Her arms were laid across a man's chest as she realized what had happened.

"Monan, you asshole," she moaned. But when she looked at the man, it wasn't Monan. It was one of the men from the bar.

"Oh, fuck." She turned to get out of bed, but there was another man there. Also not Monan. Both were naked, and she was barely covered by a thin shirt she didn't recognize. She sighed.

"Whatever. No one will remember this anyway." She disappeared from the bed. The sound of the Wandererer woke both of the men as they turned to see each other… naked in a bed with no one else around and the whole place smelling like alcohol.

"Did we…"

"I… I don't know." Tyene appeared in her room, head pounding, wanting to vomit.

"Fuck. I need an aspirin." Vienna knocked on the open door of her room without a single hint of judgment on her face. She handed Tyene a healing loot. Tyene almost felt ashamed… almost.

"Listen. I may have… taken some things from T'balt's bag. I need you to get the loot thief and put it back. Also… I know you have your ways of keeping track of me. Don't tell T'balt about anything that happened tonight." She didn't have to ask, but still Vienna nodded.